Story Time: on things we regret

In my life, there’s not a lot of things I regret but the things that I do, I really do regret them. The least we can do is learn from those regrets and vow to do better. But are there some things that you take no lessons from? Let me share this story with you and let’s see what the conclusion will be at the end.

In secondary school, as senior students we were all mandated to take one trade subject to build our entrepreneurial skills and make us more capable and useful in the real world. My school only had three options; marketing, catering and dyeing & bleaching. Marketing was too similar to economics for me, which was a subject I was already taking and it ended up being the subject that the super smart and super serious kids did because it didn’t involve too much practical work or any at all for that matter. There was also catering, I didn’t choose it because the materials needed (pots and pans, plates, blenders etc.) were too cumbersome for me and this subject ended up being for the mostly cool kids. And then there was dyeing & bleaching, which was for the in-betweens, the weird kids and as someone who has never particularly felt at home in any category, this was obviously the one for me.

I chose dyeing & bleaching out of necessity, an elimination tactic, it was the least among the three that sucked and I was actually looking forward to learning the skill. Dyeing & bleaching is basically the process of creating patterns and unique designs on a blank white sheet. In Nigeria, it is called “Adire” a Yoruba word used to describe a type of clothing known for its unique patterns and designs. We did this by tying and knotting a piece of white cloth using different methods and then dipping it into vibrant colours of dye. The end result is a beautiful piece of cloth that could be sewn and worn as any style.

Sounds fun right? Wrong! At least for the majority of the session. Our teacher for some reason started us on some, in my personal opinion, unrelated practicals. Before moving forward, I want you to know this fun fact about me, I have no single artistic bone in my body (at least not one that isn’t digital) and we were required to make drawings in little squares on cardboard paper and paint them delicately with water colour paint. I hated it. There’s not a lot of things that I hate but I so much hated all those assignments, I wasn’t good at it, my work was never as neat as I would have liked, almost everyone was doing better than me in the class and I was just frustrated and miserable. As I have grown in my academic journey, I have come to see the value in doing the things that are of interest to you, you may not always get the choice with compulsory courses but when it comes to electives, I always choose something I believe will be of interest to me and not something that may be considered necessarily easier.

So back to my story, I hated my trade subject and the frequency of the unrelated assignments. And yet if I was to choose again, I probably would still choose dyeing & bleaching. I loved my classmates for the band of weirdos that we were, I loved learning something cool that I would never have learnt on my own and I love everything using cardboard paper taught me. It was putting one such lesson to use today that inspired this blog post. This post isn’t about how I became great or the best at dyeing & bleaching, although when we finally got to what the subject was about, I was glad, I think maybe this post is just about the funny things that happen to us in life. The things we can’t control, the things that just plain out suck and yet as a Christian, one of the beliefs I hold dearly is that nothing is ever random, if we allow it, it can hold a purpose even if we never fully realize it.

As I write this blog post, I’m beginning to wonder if my experience with dyeing & bleaching is what has made me so intentional about strictly doing the courses that interest me in school. I guess we’ll never know. This post is a bit random but hey, that’s all part of the conversationswithfay experience. I know some regrets are a lot less lighthearted than this one but I do hope that you’re able to look back and be grateful that you’ve moved passed it like I am. P.S I made a solid B in my final grade 🙂